


a curse we cannot lift

by butforthegrace



Category: Once Upon a Time (2011)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tales, curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butforthegrace/pseuds/butforthegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ruby wants nothing more than to get out of Storybrooke and get out of the woods, but every time she tries, she forgets what she was doing.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	a curse we cannot lift

Ruby’s grandmother tells her that she grew up half in the woods, and Ruby remembers it dimly: remembers running between trees, crunching leaves, wading in the river.  It all feels like a dream, but she supposes that’s natural for something that happened so long ago.

She’s hardly a child anymore—all red, red lipstick and belly shirts and eyeliner so thick a hurricane couldn’t get it off—but she still goes back to the woods sometimes, to sit and think and try her damndest to remember.

It’s strange: the further Ruby goes, the closer she gets to the town limits, the more vivid the memories get.

It’s strange: the further she goes, the more maze-like the woods get, until she winds up seeing the town hall when she swears she was heading straight towards Boston.

 

 

Ruby wants nothing more than to get out of Storybrooke and get out of the woods, but every time she tries, she forgets what she was doing.

 

 

There’s a red smear across the Sheriff’s jaw and over his lips, dripping down onto his chin, and Ruby isn’t sure if it’s his blood or her lipstick but she’s still digging her nails into his scalp, still waiting for him to bite her back.

“Funny how I always run into you out here,” she whispers to him as he pushes her against a tree; the bark digs into the bare skin of the small of her back but she barely feels it, not when the Sheriff’s half-closed eyes are blurry in front of her and he’s tugging down her shorts and she can taste blood on her tongue.

He might have mumbled that he would always find her, but she’s not sure.  She’s not listening anymore.

 

 

They never speak when they’re in Storybrooke proper unless she’s taking his order at the café.  Still, there are glances, quick looks that no one can pick up but them: “I saw you checking out my ass yesterday,” she tells him one night when they’re out in the woods, walking down a trail back to Storybrooke.  She’s running her hands through her hair trying to fix it—she doesn’t even want to imagine what her makeup looks like now—and he’s got his hands in his pockets.  She glances at him to see how his expression turns and notices that he hasn’t done anything about the lipstick, a dark stain on the white of his cheek.  _Marking him as mine_ , she thinks, and then tries to dismiss that thought.  This thing they do sometimes? Just a thing.  Nothing possessive about it.

“Did you?” he asks drily.

“Well, I didn’t see you myself,” she amends.  “Someone else told me.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“I can’t tell you.  You’d probably handcuff them.”

“I thought you liked handcuffs,” he says, and in the dimming light she can see him grinning, see his white sharp teeth; a shiver goes through her.

“Only on you, Sheriff,” she tells him.  “Only on you.”

 

 

One day she tracks him down, following him through the woods, silent as a wolf creeping after a girl; the wind blows cool over her hot cheeks and she wonders for just a moment if the sheriff, this master tracker, can smell her blood, because sometimes he pauses as if he knows she’s following.

He winds up at the sign that marks the end of the town limits, and he stands there thoughtfully, gazing out at the road as it stretches on ahead.

“Trying to leave, Sheriff?” she calls.

He doesn’t turn around.  “You’re the one always trying to go, Ruby.”

She walks up to him, stands beside him, doesn’t touch him.  They watch the road together, empty and cold and silent, this road that no one ever drove down, until Emma Swan came to town.

After a moment, she reaches out and takes his hand.  She knows her rings are digging into his skin but she figures he can deal with it; better rings than teeth, right?

“We’ll get out of here someday, Sheriff,” she says.  “All of us.”

He turns and looks at her, and god, she’s never seen him look vulnerable before and he doesn’t wear it well.  He looks like a lost puppy—and when he tries to smile at her, a lost wolf.

 _Long ago there was a strange deception,_ she thinks, and her nails dig deep into his palm.

 

 

When he looks at her she sees trees and rivers and red jackets.  When he smiles there are mountains built of his teeth, and wolves dancing in the darkness above his tongue.  His hair is like the woods and she can smell the blood under his skin, hot in his veins; it makes her hungry, makes her desperate, makes her predatory.

Her long fingers turn into manacles around his wrists and her lipstick turns into a collar on his jaw and when she sinks her teeth into his shoulder, she turns into a wolf, running to somewhere she can’t remember anymore and dragging him with her as she goes.


End file.
